I opened the corner gate to Wyatt's field and walked out to herd them. Umm... less than half the cattle were there. I looked and saw the rest way further in Wyatt's field. They were over halfway to Wyatt's house. I walked over and herded them back to my field. Both groups of cattle merged and went towards my gate. At the gate they just stood there. Go through the gate! I had to herd a number to go though the gate. Panda, Red, Haynes and a few others turned and walked back further into Wyatt' field.
I closed the gate to keep the rest of the cattle in my pasture and went back to herd the rest to my pasture. Eventually I got everyone into my pasture. I then had to count to see all where there. They were.
Now to find out how they escaped my pasture. I walked along my fence and discovered the gate closer to the river was wide open. The gate has a sliding handle. There is also a chain that can be wrapped around to stop the handle from moving. The chain was on the wrong side of the handle. My guess is that when Kelly was hunting last fall and shot a deer across the fence just in Wyatt's field he opened the gate. When closing the gate he didn't position the chain to stop the handle movement. Normally one doesn't position a chain to stop the handle movement, but they don't have cattle that can figure out how to slide the handle to open the gate.
I positioned the chain correctly. Then it was open to finally move the irrigation lines. As I did the cattle all stayed next to the gate I had herded them through. I guess they were waiting for me to reopen that gate.
After I finished moving the second irrigation line I saw the cattle were now at the gate they opened earlier. This time they couldn't slide the gate handle to open the gate.
After moving the sprinkler lines I worked on moving the mainline pipes from the hayfield. I got all the aluminum pipes moved and stacked in the south pasture. I then moved 5 of the 11 steel pipes. I had to take a break and eat breakfast. Tomorrow I plan on moving the rest of the steel pipes from the hayfield.
In the afternoon I decided to spray the rest of the weeds in the north pasture. I had one backpack tank's worth left to spray. I thought. Earlier, before I got to cutting my and Donna's hay, and starting my irrigation, I had sprayed the yard, ditches, the bull thistle in the neighbor's field across the road, corral, fruit tree area, NE pasture, and almost all of the north pasture. Before spraying the one section left to spray I went over all the areas I earlier sprayed. I wanted to spray the weeds I missed earlier. I found more weeds than I expected. I didn't quite make it to the section left to spray. Dang. Usually it can take me on average an hour and a half to go through a tank of herbicide. Today it took me 3 hours and 40 minutes. I had a lot of walking to do. Much longer than I expected and the day was 90 degrees and hot.
The section left to spray, and an area before that section, dried out. Most everything is brown and dormant. Of course the weeds overall are green and not dormant. The yarrow weeds, since they have shallow roots, are dormant or on their way to being dormant. Their dormancy doesn't mean they don't have seeds. Tomorrow I plan to pull the yarrow and collect their seeds. Of course I'd rather spray the yarrow and kill them as pulling the weeds doesn't seem like it gets all of their roots and they come back next year. But dormant, or near dormant, means spraying them to kill them is worthless. At least collecting their seeds means I won't have more yarrow weeds. Just that the spraying of them will be work next year.
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